


make a choice (turncoat hero)

by WhirlyBird70



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anyway. garp becomes a pirate against his will because he decides to be a good grandpa for once, Family, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Loyalty, f for garp everyone, he tried, if i have to fill the bogard tag my self i will, ig?, there are many other characters but they are just cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhirlyBird70/pseuds/WhirlyBird70
Summary: He takes the kid as Rouge breathes her last, shuddering breath, and goes to turn out the door.Standing in his path is an old friend."Hand over the child,” Sengoku says, voice even and tired, and Garp has to make a choice.-Or: Garp accidentally becomes a pirate, purposefully becomes a grandfather, and still manages to be a hero in the end.
Relationships: Monkey D. Garp & Bogard, Monkey D. Garp & Monkey D. Luffy, Monkey D. Garp & Portgas D. Ace
Comments: 64
Kudos: 884
Collections: Better than all the rest, Excellent Completed Gen & Platonic Fiction





	make a choice (turncoat hero)

Garp arrives on Baterilla on a cold morning, where his feet echo so loudly in empty stone streets.

Women have died here. Children have died here.

All to Marine hands.

He’s here to make sure one _doesn’t._

He walks through the door, nondescript and scouted out a day ago, and looks at the sight before him. A woman, just out of labor.

A woman, with freckles on her cheeks and a flower, still blooming, in her hair.

A woman who loved the Pirate King.

Portgas D. Rouge looks at him with trust in her eyes, just like Roger did, though he is a stranger and there is a _child_ in her arms –

A child that looks at Garp with a kind of love he doesn’t even know the word for, who is innocent, who is _happy_ , and Garp has never believed much in blood anyway.

He steps forward as Rouge the Sea Storm whispers her last words to her child and her child alone, footsteps too loud again in this private moment.

She seems happy.

The child, freckled and black haired, just like his parents, seems happy.

He takes the kid as Rouge breathes her last, shuddering breath, and goes to turn out the door.

Standing in his path is an old friend.

" _Senny_ ," Garp rasps, and Sengoku sighs.

(He never liked how Garp treated Justice, how he edged outside of the rules, bit by bit, till hardly any trapped him at all.

Garp always thought it was because Sengoku wanted what he had.

(Freedom.)

Now he’s not so sure.)

"Hand over the child,” Sengoku says, voice even and tired, and Garp has to make a choice.

Sengoku is an old friend, who has done nothing but help Garp, over and over again. A friend who has shielded Garp from having to answer to the Elders, who has let him do his own thing and be a _hero_ to the world - to the Navy.

The thing Garp has given his life to.

Roger was never a friend -never quite an enemy either. He's is- _was_ nothing to Garp but a good fight, and he was the pinnacle of everything Garp fights against, even now.

Handing the child of the Pirate King over is his _duty_ , and surely, it would mean nothing to him.

(Just another remnant of Roger’s legacy made bloody and dead.)

_Surely_ , it would mean nothing.

_Ace_ , the name whispered out in a mother’s last breath, tugs on Garp's jacket, and giggles just a bit. There’s no worry in his grey eyes, barely open, and there is no fear. He looks up, and up, and _up,_ in awe at Garp, and a thousand different things break in Garp’s chest.

Garp chooses, because he's never been much for laws, and never been much for rules, and if blood mattered than there would be no human left on this face of the Earth anyway.

Garp punches Sengoku in the face with his free hand, and _runs._

(He’s not quite sure how he escapes, only knows that Sengoku brought only himself into the small village, as if he knew that Garp was a coward and far too loyal.

Good thing Garp is known for being surprising.

He might have stolen Sengoku’s landing boat, he isn’t sure, or maybe an old fishing boat. The world grows hazy as he runs from the man who shaped his career.)

He is a declared a traitor the next day, the navy making some excuse of him harboring the crew of the Pirate King, which is technically true because Roger would never abandon his child if he could help it, but –

but –

It _hurts_.

Garp is alone. He has no friends nor family that would harbor him unless he gives up the child – _Ace -_ or gives up his Justice, his own sense of self, and it _hurts_ like nothing other. No one to turn to, no one to shelter him, and no one to shelter _Ace._

He doesn't know how to take care of child. Woopslap helped him with Dragon, as did Curly Baban, the first leader of the Curly Bandits. He was clueless, otherwise, and Dragon was two the first time Garp got to hold him.

Ace is not two.

Ace is a newborn, and so _tiny_ in his hands, the ocean so big compared to them in their little stolen dinghy.

Garp holds Ace, and does not raise a black flag above his head, the mark of someone whom the government shuns. That comes later, as the world calls him _criminal_ and _traitor_ and he is no long the hero but the turncoat of the navy -

All for refusing to hurt his _grandson._

Now he sails off into a quiet sea in an unmarked boat, with the most wanted child in the world held in his hands.

At the very least, Garp can say he is a good grandfather.

-

Ace grows up shipside, because the earth is too dangerous for any child born of the devil. His face, from the snail cam on Sengoku's wrist, is slapped on every wall and every poster, his freckles memorized by admirals and the stars at the top of the pecking order.

The public doesn’t know what Ace did.

The public doesn't know why Ace is declared _wanted._

All they know is that the manhunt for the son of the Pirate King has stopped and the one for _Ace_ has begun

Garp hates it. He hates seeing his own face there, plastered alongside his grandson, even more.

Ace should have been _safe._

Instead, because of the foolishness of the world, he is forced to take his first steps in the midst of a howling storm, his first words in the middle of a sea king nest, and his first parent as _Garp_ \- Garp who evidentially cannot protect anything.

Garp, who is just as wanted as Ace, and who puts him in just as much danger.

Three years pass by, with Garp alone save for a child, and on the run.

It hurts.

(Ace looks up at him at one, and two, and three, and asks why the people in the town don’t like him, why they don’t let Garp inside when it is raining and don’t let Ace eat bits of their food. He’s so tiny, dressed in clothes both bought and stolen, holding on to a small stuffed animal (a seagull – the irony doesn’t miss Garp) as he looks up, up, _up_ at Garp.

He’s a child, who can’t understand the world that hates him.

It _hurts.)_

Sometimes life is better on the run, when they reach peaceful towns outside government eyes, where little old ladies will say _how precious_ in regards to Ace's freckles, instead of _turn him in._

Better, when Ace will get a steady bed to sleep in, and new toys, and grass to soften the soles of his feet instead of the hardened wood of a ship.

Better, when Ace laughs in the night and Garp is up into the late hours telling him stories, ignoring the hurt, instead of shushing a baby too afraid of the waves and sea kings and _marines_ outside to sleep.

Better, when Ace is happy and Garp is ignorant, and it is like a vacation rather than a home they can never return to.

Then -

Then Dragon comes by, a bundle in his arms, and Garp knows _hell_.

_“Son_ ,” he says, voice breaking, “I can’t protect another. I _can’t._ ” Dragon shakes his head and puts Luffy into Garp’s arms anyway, taking his leave without even another word besides Garp’s new grandson’s name. 

Ace looks down at his new little brother, wonder in his eyes at the way Luffy clutches his equally small fingers, and something _breaks_ in Garp’s chest

He goes inside to his little caravel, stolen away, Garp's second act official crime beyond saving a child, and gets out Ace's old baby stuff.

He has another child to raise.

\--

The fourth year, a man crashes onto the deck from the sky. He’s ragged, tired, but a smile is spreading across his face as he sees _Garp._

(Garp, who used to be a hero, but is just a traitor now. Garp, who is only good for making two little boys barely survive. Garp, who only the naïve smile at.

_Garp.)_

Garp does not recognize the man at first, but then the fedora tips to the side and _oh_ \- its _Bogard._

The man who vowed to follow Garp to the ends of the earth, all those years ago.

(Two rookies, against the world, one forging ahead with a fist covered in haki, and the other, a shadow by his side.

_I’ll follow you,_ Bogard had said to him, when Garp said he wanted to do more than follow orders, _till the seas run dry and all I can see is the end of the world._

Garp had taken that promise, and swore that Bogard would never have to.)

(Yet here he is.)

"You're alive," Bogard breathes out, happiness lacing his normally stoic features, “I found you.” Another widening of the smile, before his eyes slip shut and he passes out into an exhausted sleep.

Garp wants to follow him.

As it turns out, Bogard has eaten a Devil fruit - a bird model, an osprey supposedly.

He had been trying to find Garp ever since he went missing, scouring every sea by ship and sky alike, trying to find a glimpse of his superior. Sengoku had given him a ‘mission’ for it.

Garp knows he just asked.

(Bogard had eaten a Devil Fruit for this mission, just for a better chance.

Didn’t he know Garp wasn’t there to pull him out of trouble?)

_“_ Sir,” Bogard says to him, in the little galley as Luffy splatters baby food all down his coat, “You are my _commander_. I told you I'd follow you to the ends of the earth. I meant it. Besides,” he continues, looking at the way Ace is playing with Bogard's sword in the corner, “He's a cute kid. I wouldn't want him to die either.”

Bogard won’t leave, determined to stay in the place by Garp’s side, the place that was _made_ for him, even if their enemies are not pirates anymore, but marines who would hurt young children because of the blood in their veins.

It makes Garp’s steps steadier, surer, his laughter freer when it isn’t just for his grandsons or a sad old man, but for a _friend._

And so Bogard joins their little crew, and Garp can sleep more soundly through the night with a friend at his side, and crying children placated by someone other than their grandfather for once.

_Gramps,_ Ace calls Garp, _Bunkle_ he calls Bogard, never quite managing to figure out Uncle Bogard, but loving him just as easily as he loves his Gramps.

Garp takes a picture of Bogard's face the first time he says it.

(It’s a picture for the scrap book, the way Bogard’s face went wide and softened with love. It finds its place next to Luffy discovering sand for the first time, and Bogard throwing his kids up into the air, and the twin scowls Garp and Ace both get when the rice crackers run out.

It’s the small things, out at sea, that make the swells _worth it._ )

-

Ace is four when Garp starts teaching him how to fight. Luffy is one, but that doesn't matter. Akainu found them, yesterday, and burned everything Garp had to call _home_ to the ground.

(The little caravel that he had had for four years, stolen off some east blue island, half-finished but sturdy enough to sail, and finished up by Garp instead, who only had experience patching walls.

He thinks the figurehead was supposed to be a lamb, but he never quite managed to sand the head just right.

He weeps though, as this little formerly merry caravel sinks beneath the waves, burns marking her face in her own tear tracks. So many memories _gone –_ the lines that marked Ace’s height in the kitchen, the paint stains from Luffy’s hands, the dent in the deck where Bogard crashed down – all of it.

_Gone.)_

In the end, he's just glad Akainu didn't find his _family._

Ace needs to learn to protect himself. Luffy needs to learn how to protect himself. Garp needs a new ship. A new escape.

There's a pirate crew passing by, and Garp takes Ace up by the scruff of his tank top and throws him onto the deck, his own thundering footsteps following.

Bogard watches from the shore a mile away, fighting the landing party with Luffy in his arms.

"Now Ace," Garp says grinning like he’s a rookie again, "This is how you throw a punch!" And he punches the captain out with a single punch. Ace giggles, and does the same to the first mate, shattering his knee caps. He inherited Rouge's strength alright, and it makes Ace _laugh_ , free as a child should be.

Garp steals the ship, and in the elation of being able to give Luffy and Ace a bed to sleep on again, and a roof above their head, he forgets one important thing.

What makes a ship, a _pirate_ ship.

The next morning, the newspapers are alight with the news. _Turncoat of the Navy, Monkey D. Garp, Raises His Own Jolly Roger!_

He can never go back again, all because of that _stupid_ , stupid flag.

(He would burn it, if not for the absolute futility of that action. Besides, Luffy seems entranced by the flag.

They have never waved a flag above their heads before.)

He cries that night, because suddenly, he has lost every change at returning to the thing the world calls _justice_ , the thing that Garp fought for, once upon a time. The thing he called home, the thing he loved, the thing he had a _family_ in.

Garp feels _alone,_ even as Ace wraps his arms around his legs and Luffy buries his face into his neck.

Loneliness is far worse than being hurt.

(He hopes his grandsons know this, learn this, so that they never let go of their precious people.

Their precious _dreams._ )

-

A year passes.

Ace is five, strong and hungry and more familiar with every kind of ship than even the most experienced ship wright. He's lived on half of them after all, after their little caravel drowned by magma. He once even lived on a Navy ship, when Bogard decided that Garp looked too sad and that he deserved a taste of home out on open waters. Ace loves it all, and _smiles_ so often it would almost hurt.

Luffy is two, and Garp has never known a child that loves the horizon as much as Luffy does.

At night, when Ace is being told a bedtime story by Bogard, something about the Storm of the Sea, _Portgas D. Rouge_ , Garp will take his other grandson up to the figure head, and sit, for just awhile.

Its perhaps not the safest for a child, sitting there above the waves in his grandfather’s lap, but since when has Garp ever been the _safe_ choice.

(Roger thought he was. Dragon thought he was.

And Bogard says Ace is happy. That _Luffy_ is happy.

Sometimes, Garp dares to think that they might have been right.)

There, on that figurehead, on whatever ship they call home at that moment, Garp will tell Luffy about the world, about the battles, about the way the sea loves sailors.

About Garp's glory days, and how he was a hero, once.

(He’s not now. Now he is a pirate, and civilians run from his ship and good marines hunt him down in the same manner they hunted _Roger._ His grandsons are the only good thing that don’t crumble apart in his hands, but he’s just waiting for that final, final fall.)

It’s his favorite time of day, really, when he feels closest to his former prestige or something like it and Luffy rests his head near his heartbeat and looks with awe at a sad old man. 

Then, innocently inspired from these tales, Luffy asks _what's a hero_ \- and Bogard tells him this.

_A hero is someone who helps others... and shares his meat. A hero is a good person -_ and Luffy, two and just learning to speak says –

"Oh! Gramps!"

And Garp wonders why he ever let a black flag stop him from being who he _is._

-

The next day, Garp goes on a ship hunting spree and arrives at Water 7 in a little dinghy, Bogard flying above with Luffy and Ace still on his back.

Water 7, the drowning city, with no sea train in sight just yet, is no place for a child.

Yet two children he finds, in Tom's Worker's Workshop, one with bright blue hair attempting to kick out his knee.

Heh.

Brat.

(Well. The brats really not a _brat,_ he’s probably nearing his twenties, but eh.

He’s a brat to Garp.

Twenty is young enough.)

" _Tahahaha_!" A voice chuckles to Garp’s left, and in walks Tom, as boisterous as ever. "Garp the Hero! What brings you here, Tahahaha!"

Garp smiles grimly at an old friend, and corrects him gently. "The Turncoat, now."

Tom doesn't waver. "Bah! It’s the same as ships - doesn't matter what flag they sail under, a hero is a hero, like a ship’s a ship! Now," Tom grins, challenge in his eye, "What do you need?"

Garp smirks, and leans forward, ignoring the brat still kicking at his shins and hitting at his back. "A ship, of course."

A ship fit for Garp's grandchildren, who play and can crush stone with their bare hands.

A ship fit for a man who can fly, and a man who fights admirals.

A ship, fit for a _hero_ and a grandfather, all at once.

Tom laughs at the challenge, and declares they will do it with _GUSTO!_

-

It takes three months for them to build the ship, in-between Tom building the sea train as well.

(An impossible feat, but Garp knows impossible men. Tom will do it.)

In that time, Ace and Luffy become familiar with the sounds of the sea and an Aqua Lagoona, with the way Franky laughs and the way Iceburg will give them piggy back rides if they ask nice enough.

It nice, really. It’s the first time Ace and Luffy have stayed on land this long. It’s funny, watching them get their land legs.

His grandchildren are truly the sons of the sea, it seems. They just aren’t quite _home_ with semisolid land beneath their feet, no matter how well they take to causing chaos among Water 7’s watery streets.

(The way Luffy and Franky _click,_ the way Luffy will listen to Franky when no one else will, the way Franky understands Luffy's babble and makes him _laugh_ with robot moves, is something Garp is unsure of. Surely - surely it means nothing?

Surely it doesn't mean that Franky is _Luffy's?_

Garp can't tell by the way they both look at the horizon, and the way Franky shows Luffy a ship of dreams.

He can't _tell.)_

Garp catches up with Tom and Kokoro, secrets shared together in the dark when everyone else is asleep. They knew the Pirate King – built his ship, even.

They know the freckles that dot Ace’s cheeks and the way his eyes get iron cold sometimes, and know who they came from.

_Rouge,_ the Sea Storm, and _Roger,_ the Pirate King. Like the first time Garp met them, a rookie marine to somewhat less rookie shipwrights, they keep their mouths shut about secrets that aren’t theirs.

(Dragon was _tiny_ in their hands when they passed his son along to him. There was reluctance in everyone’s heart as the boy had wanted to _stay_ with the people who had raised him in his first two years of life.

Sometimes, watching Dragon raise hell across the world, Garp wonders if he would have been better off living with Tom and Kokoro for the rest of his life.)

In the end, no word gets out. Bogard shares drinks with Kokoro and Tom and Garp share glory stories deep into the night, an audience of young people before them, and Tom’s Workers have laughing, rowdy children in their ranks once more.

Water 7, the sinking city, does not take Garp’s family with it. For that, Garp is glad.

-

Finally, the ship is finished.

Gleaming blue hull, encased in the science stolen from the Navy that lets marines cross Calm belts, with black sails and an osprey flying emblazoned proudly on the flags. Turrets and guns line the decks, fit to be operated by any man, even a child, a custom cannonball throwing rack right at the helm, and a play area for Luffy and Ace tucked away is into the center of the ship. Adam wood, all the way through, to protect precious cargo.

It’s a mockery of a marine ship.

It’s a mockery of a _pirate_ ship.

It fits, for Garp and his first mate and his two grandkids, who aren't marines but aren't pirates, and wave a black flag anyway.

It fits.

_The Doghouse,_ Tom presents, showing off the stylized wolf-like dog helm, perfectly fitted with spots for tiny hands to grab on and a place to sit to stare at the sun.

_It's all yours Garp_ , Tom says, and pats him on the back. _Be free, you turncoat hero._

Garp laughs and feels at home for the first time in five years.

-

The first island they stop at in _The Doghouse,_ after Ace and Luffy have run themselves ragged exploring every inch of the ship, is a small island off the coast of the Sabaody Archipelago. Most miss it due to the dazzling lights of the Archipelago.

Slavers don't, not with their logue poses.

Garp doesn't, not with Bogard's osprey eyes.

It’s not a place for children, but Ace and Luffy both say _free_ as if it is something more precious than anything else, so it’s alright.

They know the laws of the sea.

(Be _free,_ and go wherever your heart takes you, no matter the storms in your path.

A sailor is only a fool who dared to lose sight of the shore after all.)

The newspapers _sing_ the next day, as Garp tends to the scrapes on Luffy's legs and the bruise on Ace's elbow, of how Garp the Turncoat shut down a slaving bracket, how he dared to show up out of the blue, waving a white and black flag –

How he dared, to do what the Navy didn't.

(What the Navy _couldn’t,_ trapped by injustice and dragons and people who don’t know freedom.)

Garp finds he feels prouder of this, fighting for the world with his grandsons by his side, then he ever did with a white coat strung across his back.

-

Garp makes his way out of the Grand Line after Sabaody, after his first initial run. Even he is smart enough to know that the waters of the New World are not a place for a child, even children who have grown up on a ship all their lives.

So Garp goes Westward, then Southward, then Northward, dodging the East and everything that could have reminded him of what he used to be.

(In the South, Ace cries at Baterilla as Garp pays his respects to the thousands lost for one little boys head. Though the bounty hasn’t been updated since then, Ace's baby face still smiling on faded paper in the backs of old bars, it still happened.

The start of all Garp's failures, here on this tiny, tiny island.

(The start of a new family, here on this tiny, tiny island.)

He is pleased to note that hibiscuses still grow on Rouge's grave.)

In the south, after the visit to Baterilla, Luffy all of three years old gets in a fight with some redheaded punk and they are chased off the island. Garp lets him get all his anger out on a bandit gang terrorizing an island, and goes out to eat with his grandsons after.

Picking fights and almost winning them – _ha!_ He’s proud of his brats. They are _strong_ , as they should be with the world fighting against them. 

In West, he frees six islands in quick succession from some random pirate's grasps, and frees one more from the hands of some corrupt Navy official.

It’s so much easier to see the flaws from the outside, isn't it?

(So much easier to see the corruption of the Celestial Dragon’s sinking into every island, so much easier to see the greed of men and little children who are bloody because of justice, not despite it.

Garp knew the world was never white and black, not crisp and clean like a jolly roger.

He just never knew it was this _bad.)_

Ace has started to unlock haki, which means Garp has started to unlock his _Fists of Love!_ Luffy laughs at the training Garp throws them into, on any island they can. They never seem to fear when Garp tells them _fight this animal_ or _survive this ravine._ They take to it with a zeal that Garp has never seen, and laugh in the wild like every little child should

His grandsons still tell him _love you,_ every night before they are tucked into bed, so he must be doing something right.

In the North, Garp avoids Germa and their forces, and focuses his attention on the fleeing people of Flevance, helping them cross the waters one by few by few.

People with white creeping up their faces and a shallowness to their cheeks say _thank you_ to him, call him _hero_ as he ferries sick little children across dangerous waters.

Ace and Luffy watch from inside their room, keeping out of the way of people barely alive, and so, so sick. A boy in a spotted hat with a young girl by his side waves at them, but Bogard ushers Ace and Luffy further inside before Luffy can respond.

When the people leave, all together on some distant island, the boy nods again. Luffy waves back as they disappear into the island’s rolling, snowy hills.

Garp doesn't know what happens to them after that.

By the marine channels Bogard has hacked into, it can’t be anything good.

(He almost succeeded.

Garp _hates_ failure.)

-

The years pass. One, two, three, his grandsons growing older and happier and worldlier than any child Garp has ever known.

(Ace asks the question, once, about who his parents are.

_Rouge, the Seastorm,_ answers Garp, calling in the hero of Ace's bedtime stories, _And the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger_

Ace doesn't ask if it was bad if he was born. All his life he has been held in the warm embrace of his grandfather, of his Bunkle, of his brother.

Ace does not know _hate._

Only love, and the freeing horizon of the sea.)

There's more in their little crew now. A few more traitors, who were told that saying _no_ in the face of injustice was a crime. A cook, who quickly earns Luffy and Ace's favor with his meals far better than Garp's, and a gunman, whose bayonet is almost as sharp as her tongue. More than that, even, all who treasure Luffy and Ace, all who want to do _right_ in the world, but can’t find themselves as Marines, or Revolutionaries, or Pirates.

People who find themselves as _traitors,_ just like Garp, in his little crew of turncoat heroes.

At least, that's what the newspaper likes to call them.

He likes it, in a way.

He _believes_ it, when fires burn at Mariejeoise, and people come crying down from the heavens to a hopeful salvation. Garp is there waiting by pure coincidence, and suddenly his ship is full of people calling him _hero_ and saying _thank you_ to him.

This time, Garp sees them all off to _safer_ islands.

He won’t fail this time.

He’ll do what the Navy _can’t._

(Ace and Luffy don’t know what to make of the people who crowd their ship, the people who don’t quite know freedom the way Ace and Luffy do. They try their best, offering food and bright smiles to anyone who looks at them, comforting hugs to those who will accept it, and simply a presence to those who won’t. The three sisters from Amazon Lily admire them, the older ex-slaves call them _cute_ , and Garp is glad his grandsons are a bright spot to the castaways of Mariejeoise.

Some of the older ones recognize him and the scar tracing around his eye. They don’t say anything, only giving him an appreciative nod.

It’s for the best, he thinks.)

-

It becomes easy, after a while, this little life of theirs, and then it becomes worse.

Garp had gotten too comfortable, here at home, under a black flag and above blue waters. He had forgotten, only for a few moments really, that admirals and elders and good marines were after his and his grandchildren’s _blood._

And now, Sengoku the Buddha crashes in from the sky to prove him wrong _._

(Safety shatters like a mirror around him, the lack of it digging shards into his heart. His grandsons aren’t safe, his family isn’t safe, and all that is left is Garp, broken yet still standing tall before them.

He can never seem to hold on to the illusion of safety for long.

_Fuck.)_

They clash over an abandoned island, waves like tsunami’s waking up at the power shooting beyond the impacts of their fists. Dangerous and fatal, if Garp had not been the one who helped Sengoku get to this point over years of training together.

_“Senny,”_ Garp begs, “ _Please.”_

His grandsons are in the bay behind him, facing off Marines with Bogard at their backs. The can't be hurt. They _can't._

But Sengoku's eyes are cold.

" _Bastard_ ," Sengoku says, and punches him again, hitting just as hard as he used to when they were both rookies and foolish and believing in a white-cloaked justice together.

It is a long while before either of them rests.

(Long enough for Garp to wonder if his grandchild are alright, if they are sleeping, if they are watching him bleed and break on sandy shores, and if they still call him _hero.)_

But Garp answers to no man but himself, now, and Sengoku is still chained to what the Five Elders call _justice._ If Garp can just outlast him, just enough, then…

(Not a victory.

But _safety,_ wrangled back into an illusion around him.)

Sengoku leaves after the fifth day, blood dripping from his face and a scowl wrapped around his features. His last words to Garp are _this isn’t over,_ but Garp can’t bring himself to care.

Sengoku leaves, and Garp can breathe again.

Garp kneels there, bloody and in the dirt, hurt but _alive,_ and counts his blessings. He does not mind the pain, when Ace, nine years old, charges up to him and _hugs_ him, teary eyed, in the middle of a battlefield.

(If he does not have Sengoku anymore, then at the very least he has his _grandson._ )

But...

No.

Oh _god._

"Ace," Garp says, pulling Ace away from him, "Where's _Luffy?_ "

Ace sniffs, and bursts into tears again. Besides him, frame tense, Bogard says the words that will haunt Garp for the rest of his life.

"He's gone, Sir. The Marines took him."

(And like before, when Sengoku asked for Ace, Garp makes a choice.)

-

His grandson is gone _._

Stolen away by some Marine with some Chameleon fruit, stolen away from the very place he calls _home_ in the middle of the night, when he should have been safe away from battle and terror. He’s been missing for two days, and _god –_ Garp knows how Luffy gets when they leave him alone.

( _Gramps_? Luffy had asked one night, quiet after a darker story than usual. _You won’t leave me, right? I don’t want to be alone.)_

Garp had sworn, when he first took Ace in, that his children would never be taken by the Marines.

(He had sworn to Luffy that he would never be _alone.)_

Garp is a failure _,_ the cost of his faults a horrible, horrible price _._

But he won’t let his short-comings kill his grandson.

He won’t _._

(He _can’t_.)

-

Ace doesn't let go of Garp for the rest of the day as they hunt down every Marine ship in a feasible distance. He's stopped crying by the second day, and is helping Garp systematically destroy any marine vessel that held prisoners in the last five days.

God.

Garp never thought he'd go _against_ marines, purposefully and directly.

But here he is - with the blood of good marines on his hands with no answers to show for it.

He never liked the look of red against white.

(He changes out his old white suit into a black one, a mockery of justice. A mockery of _freedom._

(Ha. As if he wasn’t one already.)

He wants his grandson back, _damnit_.)

Garp’s saving grace, for once, is a wanted poster.

It’s a small bounty, only about ten thousand berries, yet it's fitting because it carries the face of a tiny, six-year-old boy.

Small and unsmiling, Luffy stares at the camera, brown eyes _wide_. There's blood on his cheek, dark and ominous, and a hand around his neck, but… he looks angry _._

He looks alive.

And if there's a bounty on him, that means Luffy _escaped._

Garp hangs up Luffy's bounty in his quarters, so that when Ace crawls into his room at a new nightmare of what could be happening to his brother, to Garp’s _grandson,_ they have a reminder that wherever he is –

Luffy is _free._

(He's always been free, but Garp worries sometimes because, well.

Luffy is _alone._ )

-

It takes Garp three months to find another lead. In that time, the Doghouse seems more like a _pound_ , the halls quiet and without the laughter of joyous children of the sea.

Rye, their gunman, sharpens her bayonet by the stern every day. Condor, their cook, attempts to cheer up Ace with treats of meat and sweets, but the boy doesn't smile. Instead, he buries into Bogard's side, and doesn't look at some bit of food he would have normally fought his brother for.

(In every corner, there’s evidence of an absent child. In every moment, a reminder that Luffy isn’t here.

In every day, a little bit of hope _lost.)_

As for Luffy... Garp doesn't know _where_ Luffy is. Doesn't know if he's hurt, or well, or sick, or even _alive_ still _._

He doesn't know if his grandson is still Luffy. Still like sunshine with unwavering faith and a smile, still bold and reckless and _bright._

Garp misses him, dearly.

Until he wakes up to rumors of a little stowaway on three separate ships, and that longing turns into a little bit of hope. The brat seems just like Luffy, black-haired and brown eyed, if not for the unfamiliar scar that everyone describes as under the kid’s eye.

Looking over the bloody face in the wanted poster, Garp thinks that's it adds up. That this rumor is _Luffy._

He has a lead now - a path of ships to take, even if it takes him back into the Grand Line, back into the _New World_ , where emperors clash everyday over territories and sake and lives.

_God,_ he hopes Luffy's okay.

Garp teaches Ace how to plot a course for his brother, and they sail onward…

Straight into the path of an Emperor of the Sea

-

The _Doghouse_ was originally a ship built for a crew of four to be able to control it with ease. While it currently has a crew of about twenty now, counting two children, it is still not a big ship.

Next to the _Moby Dick_ , the _Doghouse_ shadowed by its towering might, Garp feels _small_.

(He never used to feel small. Not when he was a marine, and not when he was a pirate with his grandsons behind him.

Without Luffy, Garp feels the things he has built himself up upon start to crumble.)

He does not plan to go up at first, he doesn’t have _time_ to mess with an emperor, but then a ladder is tossed down, and well.

Garp also doesn't have time to make enemies. Not ones like Whitebeard.

Not with Ace onboard.

He climbs up, the ladder, hand over hand, slow and steady. Bogard flies up beside with Ace on his back, wingbeats counting in time with Garp’s heart, as Ace _trembles_. But better that Whitebeard, protector and father, know who is in the range of his ocean-tilting rage.

There’s silence on the deck when they reach the top. Whitebeard, imposing even sitting down. Garp, dressed in black, a grandson behind him.

A duel, between father and grandfather.

They lock eyes.

"Garp," Whitebeard says, and Garp spares a moment to wonder why he didn’t call Garp _Turncoat._

"Newgate," Garp returns, and Ace peaks out from Garp's side.

"And who might this be?" Whitebeard turns his eyes to Ace, and it is only the fact that Garp knows that Whitebeard has _honor_ that prevents him from pushing Ace behind him and shielding him from the entire world.

Beside him, Ace stares up, up, _up,_ at the giant of an emperor, and his fists tighten in Garp's cape.

(Before, with Luffy, Ace would have called the man _Banana-mustache,_ and would have had no fear.

But before, Ace didn’t see his grandfather fight his best friend, and didn't see his brother get taken by things in the dark when they should have been _safe._

Things change, after all.)

"Ace," Ace finally mumbles, and Garp knows it's _Portgas D. Ace_ or even _Monkey D. Ace_ in truth but - Ace is scared and Ace is family.

Ace gets to decide what his name is.

Whitebeard smiles at him then, nods, and Ace hides again before Whitebeard can return the introduction.

(Garp feels Ace tremble, and puts a hand on his grandson to steady him.)

Whitebeard speaks again, rumbling across the nearly empty deck. "Who are you looking for Garp?" He asks, plainly.

Garp does not lie. "My grandson." Whitebeard understand family.

"Monkey D. Luffy?" Whitebeard questions to Garp's nod and he settles back into his chair.

(Even emperors pay attention to marine manhunts.)

A pause hangs over the deck, before Marco flies to Whitebeards shoulder and whispers into his ear.

"Check Eastward, Garp," Whitebeard advises as Marco settles down, a glint of _something_ in his eye. "Dawn. There are rumors there that you might find interesting."

"Unhelpful bastard."

"I try."

With twin huffs, an emperor and a not quite pirate turn away from each other. One to the east, slowly moving down the ladder, a grandson carried on his back, and the other watching a hero turned grandfather begin a desperate search

It took all of five minutes. A conversation any longer would have marines be _anxious_ after all.

(Garp knows from experience.)

On the way down, Ace looks up to Garp with hope shining in his eyes, and asks a question Garp never thought he hear.

"Gramps? Why do they call Whitebeard "Pops?"

And Garp, for once, does not have an answer for his grandson.

(Dragon never called him _Pops_. Never really called him _Dad_ either, after Gramps left him alone too many times with Baban. It was always _shitty old man,_ or _bastard,_ or when Dragon was thirty and being a brat, _Garp._

He never knew his own father.

All Garp knows is _Gramps._ )

Ace doesn't seem to mind the lack of an answer. He only looks contemplatively at the Moby Dick as it fades from sight, curling the pipe Garp gave to him in his hands.

(And while Garp knows that Ace is his grandson, and that Ace loves _him,_ he also knows that Ace craves more, every day, something in him longing to belong, to be home, wherever he is.

Garp, turned from every port in the world, Marine and Pirate alike, can't quite give that to him.

Maybe, years later... Whitebeard _can_.)

-

Garp is nervous as they sail Eastward.

To _Dawn._

He's never quite wanted to acknowledge what the tiny town of Windmill village would think of the man who abandoned everything that they took pride in - who abandoned the Navy, the world, all for the son of the devil.

He doesn't want to think about it. He doesn't want to admit that he's _unsure,_ especially in front of his grandchild, especially in front of his crew.

But Luffy's there, on that island, _alone._

And as always, it has never been a choice with his grandchildren.

-

Garp sails east, and arrives at Dawn in three months.

(It's been six months without his grandson. Without _Luffy_.)

When he arrives, there is a pirate ship in the harbor, a black flag waving proud over the tiny village.

Three red stripes run down the side of the skull.

_Red-haired Shanks._

For the second time in a year, Garp comes face to face with an emperor, all for his grandson.

_The Doghouse_ slides easily into the harbor, Garp guiding it in with familiar ease, with ease he used once when he was a Marine, sailing his vacation warship back home. There’s no one at the docks; the town seems almost deserted, as if everyone is avoiding the sea.

(It still feels like half of a homecoming when Garp arrives.)

Ace has never been to Dawn before - but by the way he steps off the ship, easy as breathing, it is as if this has been his home port for years.

(Privately, Garp wonders about the _what could have beens_ , what could have happened if he left Ace with Dadan as planned, or if Ace found a home in Windmill village. Would he have been happy? Would he have been safe? Would Windmill be the nostalgic home for him as it is for Garp?

He shakes his head before he can wonder what he himself would be like, if he had succeeded.

That’s too dark a road to chase.)

Only Garp and Ace and Bogard walk through the town, every villager giving a nod to Garp as he passes, like any other time he would have visited ten years ago, before he harbored the devil’s kid.

It’s a comfort, but the Party Bar is up ahead, gleaming with lights and laughter, and that will be the true challenge.

_Woopslap... Makino..._

_Am I home?_

Garp crashes into the doors of the Party Bar, and everything goes _silent._

From across the bar, drink raised to his lips and familiar child pressed to his side, Red Haired Shanks raises an eyebrow.

Garp’s thinks the man would have waved if he had his other arm.

Garp stares.

Shanks stares.

Luffy smiles, big and bright despite the still healing scar on his cheek and the scrapes on his body, and yells, boldly and without remorse -

" _GRAMPS_!"

And suddenly, Garp is holding Luffy again in his arms, and he's whole and he's alive, and he is crying just as hard as Garp is.

Luffy's _alive._

(And with a suspiciously similar hat, he notes.)

Garp feels like he can breathe again.

" _GRAMPS_!" Luffy shouts between sobs, " _IM SORRY!_ THE WEIRD GUY GOT ME AND THEY LOCKED ME UP IN A CAGE AND STABBED MY FACE WHEN I TRIED TO LEAVE AND THEY WERE SUPER MEAN BUT THEN THERE WAS STORM AND I GOT FREE BUT I COULDNT FIGURE OUT WHICH SHIP WOULD GET ME BACK HOME AND I GOT LOST ANND I MISSED YOU AND ACE AND BUNKLE AND EVERYONE AND I WAS SO LONELY AND-"

Luffy pauses to take a single breath, and Garp takes his chance. "Luffy," he cuts in gently, voice rough with tears. "It’s alright. You're here now. We're here now. We're together. You aren’t alone anymore. It's _alright._ "

Luffy breaks against his chest, happy and sad all at once, and soon Ace is wiggling under his arm as Bogard stands watch. Tears spring up in his eyes - Garp is sure he has never been quite as happy as he is now, his grandsons wrapped in his arms.

(They’re _safe.)_

The moment cannot last, however, because soon Luffy is pushing away from him to talk about _Shanks._

Shanks, who he pulls Garp to, Shanks, who found Luffy just on the edge of the Calm Belt as he was sinking in infested waters, _Shanks,_ who saved Luffy once then brought him back to the only island Luffy could name, the only island he knew Garp would visit.

Shanks, who smiles softly as Luffy talks about him even though he tries to hide it behind the glass of a bottle, Shanks, who taught Luffy about life as a _pirate_ and not just a marine turned pirate, who taught Luffy about singing and piracy and _freedom._

Shanks, who told Luffy the legend of the Pirate King, and gave Garp's grandson a dream and a crown to wear, then waited for Garp to come back so he wouldn't be alone.

(Shanks, who gave up an arm for Luffy, to a Sea King, to the Lord of the Coast.

All for Luffy.

_Luffy_ -)

Shanks, who Garp looks to again, who is now so different from the brat he used to know. Shanks, to who Garp bows to, shoving Ace down alongside him with Bogard following behind.

Shanks, to who Garp says, sincerity breaking in his throat –

_"THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY GRANDSON!"_

(And if all Shanks does in response is call for a party, then it is for the best so that Garp's tears are not noticed by men he owes everything to.)

-

That night, Luffy falls asleep in Garp's arms for the first time in six months. His small hands are intertwined with Ace’s, who is asleep by Garp’s side, and never has Luffy slept so peacefully. 

Garp almost starts crying again, but if he does he thinks he'll wake up both his grandchildren, and he cannot have that.

Instead, he softly smiles on the beach as Shanks settles down next to him, bottle in hand. If Garp had a free hand he would have been offended that the man didn't bring one to him.

"He was brave," Shanks begins, softly, "But don't let Anchor know I told you that. Heh – the kid was lost in the Grand Line, lost in the waters of the Calm Belt after getting tossed overboard, and his first reaction to seeing a pirate ship was to say _cool_ and ask if we knew his Gramps." A sly look is tossed to Garp from the corner of Shank's lips. "We were surprised that we did, actually."

"Thank you," Garp says again, quietly. "For saving him."

Shanks shakes his head. "Anything for Anchor. And..." A deep sigh, and a head tilting backwards to look at the stars. "Thank you for saving the Captain's kid."

Garp freezes. Thankfully, Shank's laugh is kept quiet as to not wake the kids sleeping besides them.

"C'mon. Any Roger pirate would recognize Rouge's freckles. Thank you for keeping him alive - safe - _happy._ " There’s an odd choking in his voice.

Garp doesn't question it.

"Of course."

Shanks takes another swig of his drink. "We're leaving tomorrow, now that you're here. Can't leave Anchor alone after all, right?"

"Aye," Garp responds again still quiet. "Safe travels."

"And fair winds to you."

(The sky was red tonight. Surely that’s an omen that things are finally turning out alright.)

As Shanks turns to go inside, Garp compares him to the tiny shrimp that stood as Roger's hat rack, and thinks he might be impressed by him now, just a bit.

(He less impressed when he finds out Luffy has a devil fruit.)

(He's not impressed at _all_ when Luffy shouts _I’M THE MAN WHO WILL BE KING OF THE PIRATES,_ right in Garp’s as Shanks gives a one-armed wave from his ship, but that’s partially his own fault.

He didn't take down that black flag after all.

He sailed _free._ )

-

They spend another month at Dawn.

In that time, Garp learns all of Dadan's new favorite drinks and pays his respects to Baban's grave at the top of the mountain. He learns all the way's Makino has bloomed as her own business owner, the way Woopslap still keeps all of Garp's old mementos in his office, locked away from prying Marine eyes, the way his house was burnt down after _Ace,_ but Woopslap saved all the important stuff, such as Dragon's baby photos and his vivre card.

It’s nice, being welcomed back into familiarity, into the warm laughter of Windmill Village and the Party Bar.

The boys fit right in as well, easily hunting down wild boars, even with Luffy's new fruit, conquering the forest with ease. They become fast friends with Makino and fast enemies with the bandits, sprinting between the two with wild abandon.

(Garp thinks Dadan still loves them anyway. She's secretly soft like that.)

His crew merges with the town as if they have been there their whole life. Some might even stay - Garp won't stop them. Only a few of them have bounties, and Windmill is a peaceful town.

No divisions of justice run their way through these streets. Only the laughter of children and the easy conversation of village people.

Its _peace_ like nowhere else in the world.

(It’s half the reason Garp didn’t want to come back – he, dressed in black and waving a jolly roger, was anything but peaceful.)

-

It’s on a happy note when they leave. The sky is clear and bright, the sea calm, and a warm breeze wafting through their sails.

A good day for sailing – a good day for living.

(Ace and Luffy seem sad, and when Garp asks them _why,_ they only look at their dirty hand and feet and the metal pipes they found lying around, and say nothing.

Brats.)

_The Doghouse_ sails out of Windmill's harbor, compass set for the Calm Belt, and catches sight of a glistening ship on their right.

A Celestial Dragon.

_Damn them._

(He could have been an admiral, fleet admiral even. But if that meant sucking up to the scum of the Earth, being forced to commit Atrocities, then Garp wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't.

(Sengoku saved him from it.)

He can’t now.)

Before, Garp would stay clear.

Now, he is stronger, and fiercer, than any Celestial Dragon's ship, and he is already an outlaw, has already turned against good marines.

A Celestial Dragon is not a good marine.

(A Celestial Dragon is more devil than Roger ever was.)

The _Doghouse_ sails closer, readying for an attack, determined to take out one more scum on their way out of Dawn.

But then - a small boat comes surfing out of the harbor, S- emblazoned jolly roger flying high on its mast.

Its directly in front of the ship, narrowly avoiding being crushed.

There is a _child_ on that ship.

Beside him, Ace gasps and Luffy shouts out a name with desperation in his voice. " _SABO_!"

A gun is being readied on the ship and the _Doghouse_ isn't going to make it in time. There is no hesitation, not with his grandsons screaming and scared beside him.

Garp makes a choice.

(It's his last one.)

He leaps from the deck of _the_ _Doghouse_ , power in his legs as only someone with haki could do, and punches the Celestial Dragon in the face.

There are gasps from all around him, as the Celestial Dragon falls _down, down, down,_ Garp’s fist imprinted in his face _._

The dragon’s entourage move to intercept him, but even Cipher Pol cannot catch a grandfather with a new grandson to save.

In a second, Garp leaps down into the dinghy that a little boy calls a pirate ship, and catches the child into his arms. In the next, he launches upward and snatches the black flag off of the mast.

(You cannot be a pirate without a jolly roger, after all. Garp knows this truth.)

In the last second, he lands on _The Doghouse's_ deck, child in arms and flag on his back, and he is giving the order to _sail._

Garp has made his choice.

(Three times he has chosen.

Ace, for the world.

Luffy, for the marines.

And now Sabo, for all the corruption Garp used to say he would defend.)

He will always choose his grandsons

_Always_.

-

In the middle of the ocean, far away from the reach of dragons, Garp faces down a tiny child.

"OLD MAN!" the blond brat, Sabo says, brightly, his smile missing a tooth.

"Sabo," Garp acknowledges, already labeling him as brat number three in his mind.

"I HEARD YOU WERE COOL BUT YOU HIT REALLY HARD!" The brat’s ears might be rattled by the explosion that the Celestial Dragon had caused in his misfire. Oh well. Garp can yell too.

"Yeah! WELL I'VE HEARD NOTHING ABOUT YOU, BRAT!"

Sabo then receives his first Fist of Love. His brothers laugh at him as he holds his head, muttering about how his brothers were right about Garp’s hits. He doesn’t cry though.

Garp likes him already.

And though Ace and Luffy explain to him the brother they found in the trash heap, and Sabo explains the way he wanted to sail to catch up with them so he could leave this stupid island, Garp is still wondering how he wound up a pirate with _three_ grandsons.

(Later, Sabo forcefully adopted through drinks of sake shared on the _Doghouse's_ figurehead, Garp will sigh, and thank the world he has three grandsons.

If pirates always have treasure - then his grandsons are _his.)_

**Author's Note:**

> and then sabo and ace and luffy cause havoc all over the seas as garp reluctantly supports his grandsons dreams to be pirates and revoluntionaries (once dragon shows up to say hello to luffy and finds sabo instead.) everyone is happy and alive and mariejeoise falls way earlier because garp was like fuck this. 
> 
> ANYWAY
> 
> this idea was written entirely in discord two thursdays ago and had a 6k word count before editing i am so tired but i am VERY glad this is polished enough to share with you all. I hope you enjoyed this story, because it was very, very fun writing it. 
> 
> thank you for reading!
> 
> \- whirly
> 
> [My Tumblr!](https://whirlybirdwhat.tumblr.com)


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